


Before the Dawn

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort in Gruff Wyldon Way, Knight & Squire, Memory, Trauma, mentoring, references to alcoholism, references to war violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 04:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16189652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Before the dawn, Wyldon and Owen remember Giantkiller.





	Before the Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Set during Lady Knight after Giantkiller's fall.

Before the Dawn

It was almost dawn–the time he always forced himself to awaken because anything else was an invitation to idleness–and Wyldon hadn’t slept. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw Giantkiller–not the whole scale of the destruction, which was still too devastating for him to absorb at once, but the images that had somehow come to define the catastrophe in his mind. The gate smashed by the enemy’s battering ram. The rotting remains of the soldiers mauled by the killing devices. Bodies desecrated by Stormwings. Burned barracks where cinders covered charred corpses. Objects–a singed baby blanket and a scorched pot–that had survived the raid to serve as mute testaments to the lost lives. He had seen enough suffering that he shouldn’t have been cut to the core by the sight of Giantkiller, but he kept remembering how many refugees were at Giantkiller, and every time he did, it was a bandage ripped off a fresh, bloody wound. 

Tossing and turning on his bed as if to shake off the memories of Giantkiller, he tried to compel his errant mind into some semblance of productivity, composing a letter of appeal to General Vanget to reconsider the notion of rebuilding a fort over Giantkiller’s ashes. The soldiers, a superstitious lot inclined to see omens of death in their own shadows, would doubtlessly regard the ground on which Giantkiller had stood as cursed. Morale would plummet, desertions would soar, and Wyldon, who in the daylight might have scoffed at curses as the creations of cowardly imaginations, found the idea of curses almost credible in the dark hours before the dawn. 

With an impatient snort to chide himself for slipping into a belief in something as insubstantial as curses, Wyldon pushed himself out of bed, stirred the flames in his hearth, and set a kettle of wine to heat over the fire, mixing in a blend of spices the healers insisted could make even a horse fall asleep. Once his mulled wine was done, he poured it into a clay mug, and, hoping the cold, clear air of a northern April would wipe the clouds from his mind, stepped onto the ramparts of Fort Mastiff. 

On the ramparts, Wyldon expected to find nobody except the patrolling sentries, but he hadn’t walked far before he spotted his squire curled against one of Wyldon’s favorite elkhounds, Fleetfoot. Fleetfoot’s nose twitched as Wyldon approach, and, recognizing Wyldon’s scent, Fleetfoot’s tail wagged against Owen’s leg. 

“My lord.” Owen’s tone was unusually quiet and the light seemed to have been leached from his gray eyes as he gazed up at Wyldon. 

“Owen.” Wyldon sat beside his squire and scratched behind Fleetfoot’s ear, itching a place the dog never appeared able to reach with his paws. “You can’t sleep.” 

“No, sir.” Owen dropped his eyes as if anticipating a reprimand for his sentimentality. 

“Have some mulled wine.” Wyldon offered his mug to his squire. He was too tight-lipped to talk about the horrors he and Owen had seen at Giantkiller, but he considered it his responsibility to ensure that the boy got some sleep. Some might frown on him giving the lad wine but if his squire was old enough to see Giantkiller, Wyldon figured he was old enough to drink away the roughest edges of the memories of what he had found there. Besides Wyldon was confident that most squires snuck drinks behind their knightmasters’ backs, and tonight Wyldon was too bone-tired to maintain the pretense. 

“No, thank you, my lord.” Owen was looking at Wyldon again, this time with eyes wide as stormy lakes. “I’m fine without the wine.” 

“It’s not a trick.” Gruffly, Wyldon thrust the mug into the boy’s reluctant hands. He couldn’t fathom his squire refusing for any reason other than a suspected trap. “It’s to make you sleep.”

“I don’t want to get drunk, sir.” Owen pushed the mug back at Wyldon as if it were a chalice of poisoned wine. 

“It’s not about getting drunk.” Wyldon’s jaw clenched. Before dawn was too early to deal with Owen being stubborn as a mule. “It’s medicinal, Jesslaw. People don’t get drunk from a few sips of mulled wine.” 

“What if I can’t stop after a few sips, my lord?” Owen’s frantic question told Wyldon his squire wasn’t so much stubborn as he was scared, a horse that balked at a snake crossing its path. “What if I become dependent on the wine to make me sleep–to make me not miserable?” 

Pinching the creases in his forehead, Wyldon recalled the court whispers (which he had forgotten since he strove to avoid the discourtesy of gossip whenever possible) that the Lord of Jesslaw was too fond of wine and couldn’t hold it well. At least, the court rumors maintained that the Lord of Jesslaw was a jolly if wildly irresponsible drunk rather than a violent one. 

“Most people don’t become dependent on wine to sleep or to not be miserable, Owen.” Wyldon made an effort to gentle his voice from irritable to reasonable.

“They say that the dependence runs in families.” Owen’s fingers tangled in Fleetfoot’s fur. “It’s just like madness, magic, hair color, and eye color, they say, and my father is”– 

When even Owen’s bluntness didn’t allow him to admit aloud that his father was a drunkard, Wyldon filled the pause briskly before it could become awkward, “You don’t ever have to drink if you don’t want to, does that satisfy you?” 

“You mean I won an argument with you, sir?” Owen’s brightening face was visible in the purple light as dawn began to banish the blackness of night. 

“Not at all. This was a discussion, not an argument. If it were an argument, I would’ve won.” Wyldon stood to return to his bed and catch what rest he could before the day broke in earnest, light swallowing darkness completely. “Now try to get some sleep before the sun finishes rising. I won’t listen to any discussion or argument from you about that.” 

Certain that his squire knew better than to disobey when he took that no-nonsense tone, Wyldon didn’t even glance over his shoulder to check that Owen complied with his command. The boy would at least go to his bed even if he didn’t sleep.


End file.
